The Economist magazine just published an article about how the Democrat Party is coming to its senses and moving back to the center, leaving behind its flirtation with progressive ideology.

As Democrats have moved away from the progressive stances that were voguish in 2020 and back towards the centre, a crop of state governors could be compelling candidates in 2024 https://t.co/xgpB70Gr8N

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 13, 2023

When I saw that story I chuckled, because it is about as delusional as the people who believe that Francis Ford Coppola faked the moon landing with 1969-era CGI, or the people worried about falling off the edge of a flat earth.

Not too long after I read this tweet I watched this video from our allegedly centrist president.

President Biden is now proposing federal legislation that would force states such as Florida to allow doctors to perform child sex change operations.pic.twitter.com/S2g43tVCbr

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 13, 2023

And yes, American doctors are surgically removing female children's breasts (mastectomy) and male children's penises (vaginoplasty).https://t.co/LApCqYDK6A

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 13, 2023

This apparently counts as centrism in 2023: forcing states to ensure that it is legal to perform medical procedures on children as young as 8 that will permanently sterilize and mutilate them for life.

We can all the debates in the world about the wisdom of adults being treated for gender dysphoria medically vs psychiatrically. But adults are capable of informed consent, and even if they are making a significant mistake, it is theirs to make because it is their life. What rights they have to force others to participate in their choices is a matter up for debate, but in free societies, we either declare that people are mentally incompetent or we allow them to make personal choices.

Children, though, are another matter entirely. Children are utterly incapable of informed consent, and as a society, we recognize the right of parents to, in general, consent for children, we place limits on the range of issues for which they can consent. The state, in extraordinary circumstances, steps in to protect children even from their parents when the community decides that the child is being abused.

That isn’t even disputed. Nor is it disputed that different communities have different standards for what constitutes abuse. And, apparently, that is, unfortunately, the case when it comes to giving kids hormones and surgery to change the apparent gender of the child. If I had my druthers performing gender-bending procedures, including administering hormones to change gender identity, would be illegal before the age of majority.  It constitutes child abuse in my judgment since it is based upon the belief that pre-teens or young teens can understand the consequences of their choices.

Biden more explicit than anyone yet in saying: sterilizing kids is close to a sacrament https://t.co/kw1mphYgud

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) March 13, 2023

You’ve been a kid. How many of you would want your entire life path to be determined by a choice you made after watching some TikToks and listening to a rainbow-colored hair teacher?

But I concede that community standards differ, and what is acceptable in California where people are insane would not be in Florida, South Dakota, or Texas, where fewer people are. States have police powers, not the federal government, and there is a reason for their being excluded from the federal government. It is to prevent precisely this sort of imposition of moral standards from above.

The president doesn’t see it that way. His vision is a society where the changing whims of the Left set community standards everywhere they can extend their power. It is inconceivable that any Democrat presidential candidate in 2008 would have proposed a federal law along these lines. Barack Obama opposed gay marriage, no less sterilizing children. To say that this is a radical evolution of moral thought would be a grotesque understatement.

Yet here we are, with the President of the United States arguing that the federal government should force every state in the Union to endorse the most radical aspects of the transgender ideology using the majesty and power of the federal government to enforce his diktat.

This is what counts as centrism today, I suppose. At least according to The Economist, a once serious magazine.